


Marked Forever

by LananiA3O



Category: Darksiders (Video Games)
Genre: F/M, Mentions of Sexual Assault, NSFW, Nudity, PTSD, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-31
Updated: 2020-08-31
Packaged: 2021-03-06 19:07:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,196
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26203915
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LananiA3O/pseuds/LananiA3O
Summary: Following a joint battle with War against an angel outpost hatching a plot against Eden, Uriel finds herself in the outpost’s baths, taking off armor that got splattered with corrupted water. What should have been a swift cleanup quickly becomes much more serious when War realizes that some of her scars run deeper than flesh.
Relationships: Uriel/War (Darksiders)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 22





	Marked Forever

**Author's Note:**

> And there was only one bath... Seriously though, this idea came to me from an older post of mine where I speculated that angels with glowing wings are actually wearing prosthetics and how confused War would be if Uriel suddenly took off her wings before sex. Then I fused about a dozen angsty headcanons onto it and now it’s... this. Anyway, first smut I’ve written in years, so I hope it’s not too cringy.  
> Please mind the tags. While everything between War and Uriel in this fic is consensual, there is mention of past sexual assault.
> 
> Disclaimer: This work was written for publication on Archive of Our Own and [my personal Tumblr](https://lananiscorner.tumblr.com/) and is not for profit. Any re-publication on for-profit/monetized sites/apps is not authorized or supported by me. If you come across such a re-publication, please leave a comment in [my tumblr ask box](https://lananiscorner.tumblr.com/ask). Podfics and translations may be authorized upon request.

“We could have avoided this,” Uriel scoffed as she took off her gauntlets, “if you had waited for me to activate the outpost’s defense system.”

“I thought the Throne took that knowledge from you.”

Uriel froze, fingers hooked firmly into the latches of her right pauldron. On the other side of the bath, War, rider of the red horse, stood seemingly unfazed, removing yet another piece of his own armor. As if he had not just pushed a knife right through her soul. She had to give him credit where it was due—he truly did not seem to have meant it as a barbed jab or a mocking insult, as the other three likely would have.

However, that hardly made it hurt less.

Uriel opened the latch and flung the tainted pauldron into the farthest corner of the room. It was no way for an angelic warrior to treat their own equipment, but then again, she was no longer a soldier of Heaven, much less a champion of the White City.

The deep breath she took as she glanced at her marred gauntlets felt both hot as fire and cold as snow in her lungs.

Five centuries since the end of the apocalypse. Five centuries since she had broken the seventh seal, to revive War and call the others to Earth. Five centuries since the Throne had deemed her actions enough of a crime to strip her of all titles, honors and belongings, as well as all her knowledge of Heaven’s defenses and entryways, and banish her to the sixth circle of Hell.

Five centuries and it still stung worse than any weapon she had ever been stabbed with, worse even than the fiery swamp she had been cast in to.

Then again, she doubted she could ever go back to Heaven, even if the Throne decided to annul her sentence and restore her knowledge. Two years in Hell had tainted her, marked her, in ways that any creature of the light could sense from a mile away and while she was fairly certain that Azrael pointedly ignored said marks as a courtesy, she doubted any angel in Heaven would grant her the same relief.

And for what it was worth, helping a horseman uproot and dismantle an entire angelic outpost down to the last angel had certainly torpedoed any chances of redemption.

“—mor before it eats through your skin.”

Though he had crossed the distance between them, War’s words were fuzzy and subdued in her ears. The touch of his hands was not. She could feel the iron grip of his left hand as it held her arm in place while the right removed her left-hand pauldron, only slightly more gently than its metal sibling. It wasn’t until she _saw_ the gray ooze spread over her collarbone, eating into her skin, that the gravity of her delaying dawned on her.

“Will you take off the rest yourself or do I have to do it for you?”

Uriel blinked. War did not. He stood in front of her, a towering monolith of frowning, barely bottled rage as usual, glancing down at her like a parent waiting for their child to get dressed. Or in this case: undressed. She truly could not tell if he had been serious or not.

“You would like to, wouldn’t you,” Uriel huffed as she turned around. In the two seconds it took her to finish that sentence, the dreadful realization that she might have spent way too much time around Dis over the last five-hundred years had made her blush almost as red as the horseman’s cloak. He did _not_ need to see that. For an angel to even have her mind going there... truly she had fallen from high places.

She was almost done scrubbing the corruption off of her hands and unbuckling both her boots when War’s reply cut through the soft background noise of flowing water like tempered steel.

“I would, yes.”

Uriel paused, took off the boot she had been working on, and turned around once more. War still stood unwavering and silent, but for the first time since she had met him, Uriel felt a certain restlessness radiating from him. It reminded her of some of the demons that had lunged for her in Hell. Even worse, it reminded her of the way she herself had felt at times, about Abaddon, back before he had traded his honor and his reason for a missed shot at deciding the war in Heaven’s favor.

 _I suppose_ , Uriel thought to herself as she eyed the horseman in front of her, _that makes sense for a creature who is half angel, half demon_.

Still, the sheer easiness with which he had spoken the words was downright infuriating. It felt, to some extent, as if someone had insulted her without using any actual offensive language. War was half demon, half darkness, half corruption, half chaos. Uriel was an angel. By all divine laws, the only decent response she should give to such a declaration was “how dare you” and yet here she stood, unable or perhaps _unwilling_ to dignify that statement with a reply, staring at him as if he had just asked if angels ate sunlight.

War waited in silence for another few seconds. Then, a dissatisfied hiss escaped from between his teeth as he went to work on her armor. Suddenly, all the hesitation was gone, and if Uriel didn’t know better—not that she actually _knew_ —this was not the first time he had stripped an angel of full battle gear. As suited as his giant hands were to beating demon skulls into a pulp, they worked swiftly, almost gracefully to unbuckle and unlatch every single piece, until she was left nothing but the thin, gray shirt and pants she wore underneath. Hilariously, War—dressed in a finely stitched white shirt she hadn’t even known was hiding underneath all that armor—probably looked more like an angel now than she did.

War frowned. “It has eaten through your clothes, too.” Uriel glanced down just long enough to notice that some of the gray on her was in fact not fabric, but corrupted, acidic waters, before War took the choice of what to do from her, spun her around, and undid the straps above her wings that held her shirt in place. “Get in the water, before it eats through your skin as well.”

“It’s a little too late for that,” Uriel said through clenched teeth, but it was still good advice. She shimmied out of her pants and stepped into the pool quickly, sighing as the soothing, warm waters of Asimfos washed the ashen sludge off of her, leaving behind stinging, unsightly sores where it had sunk too quickly too deep and burned into her flesh.

Once upon a time, Uriel might have winced in pain, but this was hardly the worst thing that had happened to her in those six-hundred years since the beginning of the apocalypse. It was not a time for shame either. Worse creatures than the horseman had seen her half-naked. She was going to be fine. As always.

War walked over to where he had been standing at the beginning of this... whatever this was... and removed the rest of his armor. In spite of the many, many pounds of metal and fabric that had come off, War remained a mountain of a man, a wall of muscle, crowned by a frown worthy of any angelic commander.

The thought that all he needed to pass for an actual angel in the eyes of non-angels were a pair of wings struck Uriel with a sudden clarity that had her shiver in spite of the waters warming her through and through.

The horseman walked to the edge of the pool, knelt, and plunged his metal arm deep into the waters. The stern frown on his face twitched sharply.

“It hurts?” She wasn’t sure if she actually sounded as surprised as she felt, but judging from War’s face, he had certainly not expected the question. “I thought Death had made that arm specifically sensitive only to pressure, not heat, cold or other stimuli.”

“He did,” War replied tersely, before going quiet again. Uriel could all but hear the hesitating thoughts bouncing around his mind. Was it alright to tell her? How much weakness could he give away? How much information was truly needed? “However, it still connects to my flesh.”

“I see.” She did. Uriel knew he would likely take it as a platitude, but she truly _did_ know what that felt like. The spots between her shoulder plates where her wings connected to her sawn off wing bones tingled and stung in commiseration.

On the other side of the pool, War withdrew his hand, now free of any corrupted waters, reached for a piece of his armor, and started polishing it. Another piece followed. Then a third. A fourth. A fifth, even though she knew he had cleaned that specific piece just yesterday, after their latest sparring session.

At last, it dawned on Uriel that armor cleanliness was not the goal of this exercise.

How laughable was it that out of all the creatures she had ever met who had taken even the slightest bit of interest in her body, a _nephilim_ ended up being the one with the most decency and respect? How sad was it that, even after all these centuries, her own prejudices still followed her around like this?

Uriel took a deep breath and drew her wings as close to her flanks as she could. “They did take it from me.”

At last, War stopped polishing his armor and looked up at her. Her face, to be precise, Uriel noted, although if her senses had not left her completely, the temptation to look lower was there.

“The knowledge of how to operate defense systems like the ones of this fort,” Uriel clarified. “The Throne took it from me all those years ago. I just...” Dear Father, she felt pathetic... “I thought if I tried, I would remember. I thought there was still enough of the Light left in me to compensate... I was wrong. Maybe I truly did spend too much time on the shattered Earth and in Hell. Some marks never fade.”

The thought was terrifying. Even worse, it was familiar. It had come to her many times before, in the middle of dark, uneventful nights that left her spirit drifting through the darkness, and on days filled with heavy rain and even heavier clouds that reminded her too much of that dreadful century after Abaddon’s death. Only this time her pride had nearly gotten them killed. As much as she had hated flooding an outpost of light with corrupted water, it had been their only way to stop the angels’ plot against Eden. War had been right. She had been wrong. It wasn’t the first time.

War, in spite of how easy it usually was to incense his rage, especially where angels creating unnecessary, reckless risks to his own neck were concerned, simply returned to cleaning his armor. “Common sense was never common among the Throne. Among my people, surviving years under constant threat of death would have been celebrated, not condemned. You don’t hide your battle marks—you enhance them.”

“Enhance?” Uriel raised an eyebrow. Even though the horsemen had been an almost constant presence in Eden since mankind’s return to the garden, and even though War had become her most common sparring partner since she had taken up residence there, she had managed to remain woefully ignorant of their customs, outside of the many, many funeral pyres that had since been erected for their fallen brothers and sisters. “How?”

War, put aside his armor, unbuttoned his shirt and took it off to reveal what the humans would likely have called ‘the mother of all scars’. It was an ugly, twisted thing that stretched from his right collarbone all the way down to his navel, with jagged edges that hinted at a serrated blade. Any angelic healer would have done their best to treat it with balms and salves to facilitate its healing and dilute its discoloring until it blended well with the surrounding skin.

The nephilim had done no such thing. Instead, the scar was flanked by tattoos in various shades of red and black, but where humans would use tattoos to hide scars, these had clearly been applied to do the exact opposite: they framed the scar, emphasizing it, as if it were a trophy carried on the skin instead of in the hands. ‘Enhance’ was indeed the right word.

And were those... demonic and angelic runes?

Against her better judgment, Uriel stood up, crossed the distance between them, and put her fingers to the vaguely familiar lines. Underneath her fingertips, War’s skin was almost scorching hot, as if the fires of Hell still burned somewhere inside him. She wasn’t sure if it was the memories the heat brought back or the change from blessed, warm bath water to not so warm air that made her shiver from the waist up.

“Is that...” The angelic part of the runes looked agonizingly familiar, but her mind refused to supply the related memories. It was like trying to remember the face of someone she had only met once, many centuries ago, or like speaking a sentence and not being able to find the last word, even though it laid on the tip of her tongue. “What was it called? I can’t—“

“The Sacramentum Defensionem,” War thankfully concluded, before she spent more time making a mockery of herself. “The Oath of Defense. _I shall not yield until I die. I shall not falter in dark nor light_.” War’s eyes narrowed in what Uriel could only describe as a strange mixture of seething fury and suspicion. “As I understand it, the oath is part of the vows any angelic champion would need to take.”

“I shall not yield until I die...” The words felt strange on Uriel’s tongue and even stranger when she repeated them in the sacred tongue, even though—if War was indeed correct, and she had no reason to believe he wasn’t—that was the language in which she would have spoken them, thousands of years ago, when she passed the trials to become a champion, rather than a normal soldier. “I shall not falter...”

For the first time in her life, Uriel felt the sting of actual _hatred_ , not disagreement, not anger, but rather pure, distilled _hatred_ for the angelic hegemony that had cast her out of Heaven. “It wasn’t their’s to take.” She wanted to scream, but all that came out of her mouth was bitter muttering. A good angelic champion did not just say the words. They lived them. They _became_ them. “I understand removing my knowledge of Heaven’s defenses and weapons, but why this? This was part of who I _was_.”

“It still is.” War’s right hand cupped her face with a tenderness so unexpected of someone of his make, it almost made her want to laugh, however, the spark of amusement died the instant it hit the gravity of his gaze as he forced her to look right into his eyes. “You do not have to remember them to live them, Uriel. You did not falter on Earth. You did not falter in Hell. You did not falter in Eden. You did not falter, here, today. It is Heaven who lost the last of their honor. Not you.”

“ _I would not have the last of Heaven’s honor die with its champion_ ,” Uriel recited as the memory sprang back into her mind. How she had pointed her sword right at his chest, at all the armor covering this very scar, accusing him of using her for his own selfish purposes. What a fool she had been... “You know...” Uriel swallowed hard. “That _was_ the greatest compliment anyone had ever given to me. At least until now.”

For a moment, it seemed as if time had stopped. Uriel watched silently as War lowered his gaze, seemingly pondering how to respond to her statement. She had known him long enough now to expect his answer to be similarly simplistic and yet poetic as most of his thoughts towards her tended to be.

Instead, War settled for the only thing even more War-like: the simplicity of raw physical touch. A short yelp of surprise was all Uriel had time for as he suddenly pulled her face towards his and pressed their lips together.

The kiss was short, fierce, and left her gasping for breath the moment it ended. Somehow her heart had ended up in her throat and Uriel swallowed hard to push it back down where it belonged. War’s hand had wandered as well, as had his gaze. The former was now tangled in the hair behind her head, clinging to her as if he was afraid she would fly away right this instant if given half a chance. The latter was traveling across her body—or at least the half of it that was no longer submerged—with a ravenous hunger that should have made her recoil, bridled only by the remarkable restraint of someone who had spent millennia in possession of enough power to end every realm he walked into single-handedly.

“If you want me to stop,” War muttered through his clenched teeth, “then say it now.”

 _I should_ , Uriel thought to herself, as she opened her mouth to speak and no words came out. But then again: what for? For the sake of oaths she no longer remembered? For the sake of a title she no longer held? For the adoration and respect of people who had cast her out? What was the worst that could happen here? That she could be marked by a piece of the darkness of Hell? That had already happened. That the Father would punish her for selfish desire? He hadn’t punished humanity in five-hundred years. What would he care about her?

Uriel closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “I don’t.”

That was apparently all the consent War required.

The second kiss was longer and deeper. The third even more so. The hand in her hair wandered lower, trailing over her shoulder and collarbone until it reached her breasts and even though it was not the first time Uriel had been touched there, the feeling of a thumb brushing over her nipple still made her tremble. It might even have made her flinch, had War’s left hand not reached for her waist, drawing her closer and holding her in place with a firmness that applied enough pressure to be almost uncomfortable, but not enough to bruise. Her mind tried to come up with an adequate comparison, even as her own hands rose to reach for War’s chest, but neither Abaddon’s rare, almost feathery light caresses, nor the crude assaults the demons of hell had inflicted on her, compared to this. She followed the trail of the tattooed scar once more, eliciting a rumbling grunt from War as she went, before reaching the hem of his pants.

War all but growled, put both his hands to her waist, and lifted her out of the bath as if she weighed nothing, before setting about removing the last of his clothes. The marble floor felt shockingly cold underneath her knees, although as far as Uriel was concerned, it could have been made of ice for all that she cared. What worried her far more was the hard bulge outlined against War’s pants. Abaddon had been taller than him, but apparently size was not always proportional. She remembered how much her jaws had hurt after pleasing Abaddon—the ‘less painful’ and ‘less inappropriate’ alternative he had suggested to what she had once offered to him. How much would the ‘more painful’ and definitely inappropriate way hurt with someone of War’s dimensions?

 _That_ , Uriel concluded as she swallowed her fear, w _as something I should have considered before I agreed to this_. She turned around without a word, bent over, flattened her wings to the side and rested her head between her forearms. The cold floor actually felt rather soothing against her forehead. She supposed if War continued to measure his touch as carefully as he had until now, it might not even end up being too bad.

Uriel braced herself for a pain that never came.

In the long seconds that followed, she almost wondered whether War had changed his mind and decided to get up and leave, when his voice suddenly pierced through the rushing of blood and the beating of her heart that had somehow leap-frogged back up and into her brain.

“What are you doing?”

What—“What do you mean, what am I doing?” Was he being serious? Uriel’s fingers curled into fists. Suddenly, she very much felt the tempting urge to just get up and punch him. “This is what you want, is it not? Get on with it.”

She honestly could not tell whether it was a good sign or a bad one that War sounded just as exasperated with her as she was with him when he finally replied.

“Not like this. You are not a dog, Uriel. Turn around.”

Uriel sighed, pushing away the unbidden memory of the many, many times she had heard the words ‘Abaddon’s bitch’ during her time in Hell, and did as War had told her to. As horrifyingly tempting as it was to have a glance at what exactly was waiting for her, Uriel kept her gaze firmly fixated on his face. “Then how?”

“On your back.”

He spoke the words with such candid casualness that the realization finally hit Uriel with the force of a war hammer to the face. Strife was the one in his family that had been whoring his way through every realm over the course of his life, not War. Had War ever even slept with an angel? She doubted it. Otherwise, the logistics of the situation would not be lost on him now.

Uriel sighed. “Fine.” Her hands reached for the base of her left wing first and she swallowed the curse she wanted to mutter under her breath. This was never easy under the best of times and it certainly wasn’t now, with the eyes of a mildly annoyed and not so mildly lusting horseman on her. “I’ll take them off then.”

“Take them o—?”

It took but a blink of an eye for War’s expression to warp from confusion to shock as she dislodged the wing from where it attached to her bones. The golden feathers retracted in an instant, shrinking and fading until they had fully disappeared into the rounded chamber. As light as the prosthesis was, it always felt heavy in her hands once she took it off. More importantly, it made her back feel beyond naked, as if someone had flayed her and then some, leaving her lungs open for all the world to see.

She set to remove the other wing, only to freeze as the sheer horror on War’s face finally registered in her brain. It couldn’t be that he... there was no way, was there?

“Don’t tell me you did not know that they were mechanical.”

“I did not.” War’s voice had never sounded so small. In any other situation, it would have been absolutely hilarious. Right now, all it did for Uriel was make her angry.

“We have been sparring almost every day for half a millennium and you only just noticed this now?!” This could not be happening. It wasn’t like War to be so unobservant. So... dense. Perhaps it was her frustration with him that made her miss the second latch on her right wing four times. “Most of the Hellguard lose their wings in battle at some point. If that was all it took for us to stop fighting demons, the White City would have fallen millions of years before I was born.”

At last, the wing came off. Uriel set it aside next to the other one, then turned to War once more. What she saw almost made her feel guilty for snapping at him as she had. Almost.

“You did not have to do that...” War’s voice was barely more than a whisper, but the sadness underneath it ran deeper than the oceans. “They are a part of you. I would never ask you to remove a part of you just to please me.”

“That’s not why—“ Uriel exhaled deeply. “They are rather inconvenient and painful to lie on. Now they won’t get in the way.” War’s face remained set in a concerned frown. Who knew frowns could carry so many expressions? “Do you still want to do this or not?”

War looked at her discarded wings, then back at her, then back to her wings, then at his own left hand. The metal fingers curled into a fist and back again slowly, before his right hand reached for where the metal connected to his forearm.

Uriel blanched. “What in Heaven’s name are you doing?”

“Evening the odds,” War sighed in reply, although she could tell from the frustration in his voice that perhaps it was not the exact metaphor he had been looking for.

“You don’t have to do that.” Uriel said.

“Neither did you.” The metal hand came off with a loud clank, revealing a scarred stump in its place. The sight was so jarringly alien, it made Uriel cringe as he set the hand down next to her wings. “They are sharp and likely to hurt you. Now they won’t get in the way.”

Somehow, Uriel felt both the urge to kiss him and the urge to punch him. In the end, War made up her mind for her. His right hand settled in her hair once more, pulling her down with him as he leaned over and kissed her again. The floor felt even cooler against her exposed wing bones than it did against the rest of her. Was it the same for War’s scarred arm, where it rested left of her body, supporting his weight as his right hand traveled lower again? Did it also itch and pinch when storms were coming? Was it al—

Uriel gasped as the feeling of calloused fingers against her inner thighs brought her mind back to reality and received an even fiercer kiss in return. War’s tongue slipped into her at the same time as his finger did and the double sensation of having him not just against her but inside her made her back arch. It was a slight movement, but the feeling of her exposed wing bone scraping against the floor was enough to make her whole body tremble. It pinched and tingled just enough to be almost uncomfortable, but not enough to ignore how utterly sensitive it made the rest of her at the same time, and for a moment she could feel every cut on War’s hand, every inch of his almost smoldering skin that touched her, and the pulse of the blood rushing through his lips where they met hers. Uriel moaned and if she wasn’t mistaken, War’s lips curved into the tiniest hint of a smile.

It died the instant her moan changed into a suppressed yelp as his fingers withdrew from her only to be replaced by something far larger in both length and girth. The rest of his body froze in an instant, while his right hand traveled up to her left, carefully trying to unclench the fingers she had balled into a fist.

“Uriel?” There was concern in his voice and probably on his face as well, although Uriel found it hard to open her eyes against the blinding pain that had just speared through her. “Have I… hurt you?”

“… inevitably...” was the only word that managed to push through her pressed lips, even though in her mind it had been preceded by the words ‘no more than you were bound to’. She had heard that it often hurt the first time and yet still she had been blindsided by the sudden pain. That was on her, not on him.

“Is this… your first time?”

War sounded surprised, and that more than anything else added insult to injury. On the bright side, it gave her strength she needed to finally suck some air back into her lungs and open her eyes again. “Angelic champions are sworn to celibacy. What makes you think I’d break those vows?”

“I...” Was that genuine discomfort or just embarrassment in War’s voice? She followed his eyes as they roamed past her face and her throat down to her breasts. “I thought you might not have had a choice in the matter.”

_Down to the scars…_

Uriel felt her blood wanting to freeze at the memory. Clawed hands tearing through her clothes, teeth sinking into her flesh. How she had kicked and bit and only barely struggled to safety. How she had spent the rest of the day gathering hellish armor off of demon corpses and sewing it together into something resembling protection, all the while silently cursing the angelic hegemony that had exiled her under every shallow breath.

It had been, as far as she was concerned, the lowest she had ever fallen in her life. The worst day, even if she had gotten away in the end, even if no angel had died that day. It was selfish and petulant to think of it as worse than the days she lost dozens of soldiers on Earth, but it was the truth.

“You thought...” Of course he did. It was not as if she talked much of her time in Hell. All War knew of it, he knew from her scars and the reputation she had gained among demons for fighting a war she could not hope to win. “It didn’t go _that_ far.”

“Oh.”

How a single syllable could hold so much palpable relief was beyond Uriel’s comprehension, but it hardly mattered now. What mattered was that the memory was fading again and so was the pain that had brought her into this mess of a conversation in the first place.

“War...” Uriel finally unclenched her fists. One of her hands found War’s, squeezing it with what she hoped registered as reassurance. The other went behind his head, mimicking the way he had played with her hair before. She had always imagined it to be coarse and brittle, but it was soft as a feather. A mark of his angelic heritage perhaps.

For thousands of years she had been looking at him as half-demon. For five-hundred years she had looked at him as something completely different, divorced of the notions of good and evil. Now, at last, it finally sank in that he was also half angel. Half light. Half purity. Half order. In many ways even more so than some angels she had met.

“I will be alright, War. Go on.”

War waited for a few more moments, as if expecting her to change her mind, then continued where he had left off. The pace he set was brisk, a deep and steady rhythm that left her gasping for air as it kept on scraping her scarred wings over the floor and War’s lips moved from her mouth, down to her collarbone, her throat and, at last, her breasts. If the scars did bother hi—

Of course they didn’t. If she hadn’t already wrapped her legs around his and pressed her hands to his shoulder blades, Uriel would have slapped or kicked herself. Nephilim did not hide scars. They enhanced them. As far as War was concerned, the bite marks were not a sign that a demon had managed to get so close to breaking her, but rather a sign that she had survived what many would not.

To him, Uriel was not a fallen angel, a tainted creature of light, a wayward soldier. To him, she was Uriel. Nothing more, nothing less. He would take what she was willing to give. Nothing more. Nothing less.

“War...”

It was a single word, uttered weakly in between gasps, but apparently it was enough affirmation for War to increase his efforts. His right hand, which had mostly remained still by her side until now, reached for her thigh and pulled her leg higher and him deeper. To Uriel’s surprise it no longer hurt at all. If anything it felt more intense and not unenjoyable either. Whatever shivers her memories of Hell had sent through her flesh had been replaced by the steady warmth radiating from the living furnace on top of her. Whatever discomfort the lack of her wings had caused had long since been compensated for by how the normally tense muscles throughout her body relaxed with each touch to the scars.

If warm, light, and at peace with herself was what being a sinner and a traitor felt like, then Uriel was fine with closing her eyes and accepting it while it lasted. War was right. It was their loss, not hers.

Eventually, it ended as it had began—with War’s hand in her hair and his lips on hers, as he released his seed inside her. He rolled over onto his back, drawing her with him and against his chest, and cursing softly as the metal of his gauntlet and her wings poked against his shoulder.

“I suppose next time we will have to put those further away.”

“I’m surprised you’d want there to be a next time,” War answered flatly.

He really was. Uriel could tell from the undertone of his voice, from the soft tremor that ran through his chest as he exhaled the words into her hair. She huddled closer, somehow feeling infinitely small and weak without her wings all of a sudden.

When she finally realized why, it made her laugh.

War shifted ever so slightly and looked at her in utter confusion. “What is so funny?”

“Did you know that fraternization with a nephilim was one of the five charges brought against me during my trial in the White City?”

“What?” Poor War. Angelic laws were always confusing to outsiders. She could only imagine how much worse it was for someone whose own species’ rules had been refreshingly simple. “How? We had barely had a single friendly conversation at that point. We had fought three times and you had killed me once. How is that fraternization?”

“Three?” Now it was Uriel’s turn to be confused. She remembered the maker’s hideout. She remembered the dry road. But when—

“A long time ago,” War cut through her thoughts.”In the White City. You had been barely out of adolescence at the time. Abaddon had been building a bomb that only killed demons—”

“War...” The memory came back with a sudden and cold clarity that made her teeth clench. “Let’s not talk about that, shall we.”

The day the sacrament bomb had been destroyed had been her first defeat ever. She doubted War knew, just as she doubted he knew that his assessment that no-one would have blamed her had she let him pass had been incorrect as well. They would have. Of course, fighting him and then living to tell the tale while everyone else in his path had perished had been only mildly better. She had had to fend off questions of what kind of deal she had struck with this half-devil to let her live for literal years.

“If it is any consolation,” Uriel said, “they found me innocent. Of fraternization with you.” She rolled over onto her back once more and sighed at the ceiling. “I wonder what they would do if they could see us now.”

War huffed at the suggestion. “What’s the worst they could do? Exile you from Heaven?”

Uriel turned her head back to him to find his brow knitted into its usual frown and a smile on his lips. It took only a second to make her laugh. “I suppose exile does come with certain freedoms. So long as you have a horseman who would drag you out of Hell.”

Had she ever even thanked him for that? Uriel didn’t recall. All she knew was that she had been downright insulted when he had shown up in the middle of a battle between her and a dozen demons, two years after her banishment, no worse for wear, much in contrast to her. How she had initially derided his efforts to convince her to leave as a selfish act of misaimed pity.

Well, as the humans always said, late was better than never. “Thank you, War.” She turned her face back to the ceiling, to the familiar patterns of angelic architecture that had once felt like home and safety. “For having faith in me when I had—have none left.”

War, ever the stoic giant, simply rolled back over and on top of her. It made her raise an eyebrow in amusement.

“And what do you think you’re doing now?”

War kissed her twice and smiled again. “Fraternizing.”


End file.
